Dwarf Women: Miniature Collectors Guide

I really don’t like the single sex race trope in fantasy. Which is not to say I’m against exploring non-binary gender dynamics though fiction. Far from it, I think it is a grand idea, and can be incredibly interesting if done right (see Left Hand of Darkness for example). But that’s actually task best accomplished by science fiction. The problem with fantasy is that it is usually less interested in exploring ideas, and more into telling stories of heroism. And while there is nothing wrong with that, when you see a fantasy race that is composed of nothing but dudes, it is typically for some contrived and silly reason.

For example, how come we hardly ever see, hear or read about Dwarf women? Dwarves have been one of my favorite Fantasy races ever since I finished reading a very heavily used library copy of The Hobbit back when I was still just a wee little lad. Back then I didn’t really notice the gender ratio discrepancy among the bearded folk, possibly because most of the fantasy books (including Lord or the Rings) were about dudes, doing dude stuff, with an occasional princess being damseled somewhere in the background, but only if she did not get in the way of important world-saving dude business. Then, of course, I grew up, but it seems like most of fantasy didn’t. Or at least not entirely. While it is not uncommon to see modern fantasy games, novels and series try to be better about gender representations, they are still virtually no Dwarf women anywhere. Why? I don’t really know, but I suspect it is for the shallowest and worst of reasons: because artists, designers and storytellers can’t figure out how to sexualize them.

Dwarfs are short, stocky, strong and grumpy and there really aren’t many easy or effective ways to make that sexy. And by sexy, I of course mean the Hollywood version of “sexy” – meaning whatever is deemed to be attractive to middle class, white, cis-het males between the ages of 18 to 35, which is a rather narrow definition of attractiveness. One must wonder if we should eve try to apply such standards to clearly a non-human group of imaginary people. After all, male Dwarfs do not need to fit the Hollywood definition of a “hunk” to be cool, and so Dwarf women do not need to be Hollywood style “babes” either. Which does not mean they have to be ugly. They can still be good looking, and even beautiful – just on their own terms. For example, take this image:

Dwarf Warrior

This is unmistakeably a Dwarf warrior, who also happens to be a woman. She epitomizes everything we usually associate with Dwarfs: raw strength and resilience, determination, overall grumpiness, penchant for heavy ornate armor and weaponry. I don’t think anyone could argue she is not a Dwarf. She definitely looks the part. Not only that, she is far from being ugly or visually unappealing. She definitely has a lot of gravitas, presence and charm. She may not have the supermodel body of an elven princess, but she does not need it. She looks like she would be an interesting and probably a memorable character.

So it is not conceptually impossible to take established cultural template we have for the short bearded fellows, and successfully apply it to someone who is not a dude. In fact, it is quite easy.

Which is why we should just stop using whole hand-waving theory about Dwarf women being rare, sheltered and treated like expensive furniture. Making Dwarven society extremely patriarchal is not only sexist (and therefore not cool) but also artificially limits the stories we can tell within the imagined universe. Fantasy, especially as expressed through role playing and tabletop games is supposed to be about escapism and creating shared narratives, about far-away places, and larger than life heroes… As long, of course as they are not Dwarf ladies.

Whether you are a player or a game master, I implore you to ignore any lore that artificially tries to limit your choices by creating single-sex races. Make female dwarf characters, NPC’s and enemies. Randomly put female Dwarf models in your tabletop armies. Why? Because it’s cool, and because you can. And to make it easier for you, I decided to compile a list of female Dwarf miniatures you can use both for RPG and war gaming.

The rest of this post is very picture heavy (I’m including thumbnails for each miniature) so I’m going to put it behind the break.

Citadel Miniatures

As you probably know, I play Warhammer Fantasy so I figured that I might as well start with the miniatures for the game I know and love. Warhammer uses 28mm heroic scale which is probably the most common size for RPG and war-game miniatures. In most cases this means miniatures made to that scale should be roughly interchangeable regardless of the manufacturer and the game they were made for. This typically works out well for humans and elves, but Dwarfs are a bit of a special case.

You see, Dwarfs are short. Exactly how short they are varies from game to game, and so do their body proportions. For example, Warhammer Dwarfs are not proportional at all. They have foreshortened legs, low center of gravity and enlarged heads and arms. While they are a good few millimeters shorter than humans, they are about twice or three times as bulky and massive. So if you want to use, say Reaper miniatures (which are proportional) in your Warhammer Dwarf army, they will stick out and you may need to do some converting to make them fit in with the crowd.

Unfortunately, Games Workshop currently does not sell any female dwarf miniatures. Their entire range is composed of male dwarfs. They did however sell a few female models in the past.

The most popular, and most recent of these models is Queen Helgar Longplaits who was a special character released with the Grudge of Drong campaign. Up until recently she was still available from the Games Workshop website as a failcast sculpt, but she is now officially out of production.

She is probably the only model on this list you can legally field in Warammer tournaments without anyone making a fuss. She crops up on eBay quire regularly and usually goes for about twenty bucks or more.

The other Games Workshop / Citadel female miniatures that I know of were actually released as “adventurer” models for Warhammer Fantasy Role Play. This means they are semi-legit with regards to tournament play. They are unmistakeably Citadel / Games Workshop designs, and most people assume them to be legitimate part of the range. Then again some may dispute their use in tournaments because they were not originally made for the tabletop game. Still, they are a catch for collectors.

I own Shaz Ensun, and she fits right in either with my vintage Marauder era clansmen. I can also technically field her with my Marauder Iron Breakers because she sports the same type of chain mail as they do, though she does not have the plate armor over it.

There were also a few more pre-slotta models produced for Games Workshop by Ral Partha, but I didn’t list them here because they are very old, actually quite poorly made and I couldn’t find any clear photos or identifying information about them. As far as I could tell they were all non-combatant villagers in babushka style head scarfs, an proportioned more like Halflings rather than proper dwarfs.

Reaper Miniatures

Reaper has a huge selection. If you are looking for variety or want to buy female dwarfs in bulk, they are the place to go. I own Freja Fangbraker model and I can attest they make good quality minis. That said Freja sticks out like a sore thumb when placed among Citadel dwarfs. She literally towers above them, and I’m considering taking out her knees to drop her down a few millimeters.

Reaper makes Dwarf miniatures for two games, and they feature female models for both. The Warlord range is 28mm heroic scale with 25mm slotta bases but the models fit neatly on the standard 20mm bases used by Warhammer Dwarfs. The Dark Heaven Legends range is also 28mm but they are designed to be baseless. The minis have a wide flat surface on the bottom. They do fit on 20mm and 25mm bases though.

Hasslefree Miniatures

Hasslefree is a UK company but they do ship to US. I bought Haela from them, and she currently hangs out with my Dwarf Rangers. Their minis have the opposite problem to the Reaper’s Warlord range: they are smaller than Warhammer Dwarfs. Haela is perfectly sized for the Lord of the Rings 22mm scale, but among Citadel Dwarfs she looks too slim. Still, it is a very nice mini and I just tell people she is basically the equivalent Arya Stark – a teenage bad-ass adventuring with the Rangers.

Stonehaven

Among all of the miniatures listed here the Stoneheven ones are probably the most recent. They are a result of a very successfully funded Kickstarter and are essentially one man’s passion project. There is a good variety of models to choose from, most in non-standard Dwarf roles such as rogue, necromancer and etc.

The range is aimed mostly at RPG players but they can be used in war games.

Scibor

All Scibor minis are multi-part resin casts. I don’t own any of them. They are European company (Polish I think) and I have no clue if they ship to US. They also seem to be on 20mm scale which makes them much smaller than Citadel or Reaper products.

Spellcrow

Spellcrow makes two female dwarf miniatures for Umbra Turris battle game. They seem to be 28mm scale, but the proportions are very odd. They have a cool cartoonish look to them, but they will stand out quite a bit if you use them for Warhammer. No clue if they ship to US.

This is all I have for the time being. It is kinda sad that there are so few of these out there. It should be impossible for me to make a comprehensive list of female dwarf minis, and yet here we are. This is a pretty exhaustive list, but I’m sure I might have missed something along the way. If you know of any miniatures that should be on this list, please let me know in the comments and I’ll add them.

6 Responses to Dwarf Women: Miniature Collectors Guide

I am with you about the middle stuff but think you start and end with the wrong conclusion:

We need an army of all women dwarfs or whatever, but not doing weird women things… just doing “dude” things or you know… dwarf things… Actually it would be a cool storyline for any gamemaker / storyteller who wants to shed some of their cis-het guilt and explain that all the previous stories about mostly male armies were because women dwarfs are the ultimate warriors and they stay at home and train waiting for really big battles or battles to protect their homeland because the men are more expendable, not being as good of fighters.

Or even just to be more equal you could say that the women fight in battles against other women, and since fantasy tends to follow male characters you don’t typically see the equally grand displays by women (or all races/classes) because they all fight each other exclusively.

I would love to see more diversity, but if you wanted to quickly fix some things and have it go with the existing cannon that should work.

Well, this is kinda what I did with Imperials in Ravenflight, but there I was more interested in inverting the power imbalance between sexes. I wanted them to have an oriental theme, but at the same time I wanted to subvert the strong patriarchal social norms usually depicted in samurai stories. I guess this could also work for Dwarfs… But doing this you are at a risk of doing yet another Asari clone which is problematic for different reasons.

This post was mostly inspired by the conversation with Dunc we were having in the other thread about how Warhammer is such a mixed bag when it comes to gender representation and how it might be problematic when introducing young girls into the hobby (Dunce is a new father father, and I’m soon to be an uncle).

So in that light I’m more interested with Dwarf women simply existing as heroic PC’s and NPC’s in the game world. Especially Warhammer, which is near and dear to my heart. D&D on the other hand is actually pretty good at it. For example 4th edition player handbook has this picture next to the entry for Dwarf player characters:

Both genders are represented, and last time I checked the fluff didn’t include any background information about gender roles in Dwarf society, though depicting both genders in full battle gear does strongly suggest they are rather egalitarian.

Yeah and I wasn’t specifically talking about gender reversal but I also don’t have a problem with it. Not to get too far off topic, but sometimes we need a little bit of forced inequality in favour of those who have been oppressed or left out. While many people even who are comfortable with the notion of homosexuality dislike pride parades because it seems almost aggressive… there is no denying that pride parades have pushed the middleground on homosexuality to a much more reasonable level.

In the same sense if more and more writers start adopting these female driven plots and possibly even making males subservient to the women.. it would more than likely drive the moderate writers to at least just include women as normal parts of a story.

Thanks for posting this, I completely agree with where you’re coming from. It all went mostly over my head when I was younger, too, although I do remember listening to a radio version of the Hobbit when I was a wee little lad myself, and my mum suddenly said, “Wait a minute, there are no women in this!” (I still love the Hobbit, mind you, although the book’s completely mono-gendered nature seems quite freakish when I think about it.) Really don’t like the “indolent, stupid” females comment in the Skaven book (came across it again the other day) or the phrase “brood mares” in some or other dwarf article I was reading. It seems half-baked at best and spiteful at worst….. I suppose that, despite their perils, dark destinies and broad injustices, these are supposed to be worlds we actually want to visit and spend time in. And I’m generally pretty bored of “men’s worlds”!

It’s a shame there are quite so few female dwarf miniatures—no danger of that 50/50 army anytime soon!—but I like the ones you’ve tracked down. I’m quite fond of the old Citadel models but thanks especially for finding the Slayer ones, I’ll definitely add them to my Talisman pile [fixt – bought them now!!]. It actually made me think a bit more about your general point. I think there MUST be female troll slayers because otherwise it says bad things about dwarf society and makes me not like them! Why else would there be no troll slaying women, unless
a) Women aren’t allowed out, therefore are unlikely to be dishonoured in battle or even encountered out in the world.
b) They don’t have any honour to lose.
c) Dishonoured women are put to death.
(None of these are any good!)

“Making Dwarven society extremely patriarchal is not only sexist (and therefore not cool) but also artificially limits the stories we can tell within the imagined universe.” I think you’ve nailed it there. On the Victoria Lamb website it says, “One can only imagine what grave misfortune could cause such a nice dwarf lass to take the Slayer’s oath,” which piques the interest that bit more and just broadens the whole setting. I often find female leads in ‘standard’ fantasy more interesting than male ones because there’s that one extra barrier to break through/overcome. Vive la différence!

I’m kinda annoyed at genderisation in the world and I really want to play soccer (a fairly male pastime over here) and geeky board games with my girls when they get older. But I need you to work with me, fantasy genre, otherwise THIS will happen: “Where are all the girl dwarfs, dad?” “Oh, they’re all at home, they’re actually ‘brood mares,’ you see, so they’re too precious to let out of their dwarfholds because they need to stay at home and produce young.” “Oh, ok. And do you get any Skaven who are girls?” “Well, yes, but they all live underground in massive, impersonal breeding pits and are large, indolent and semi intelligent. At most.” “Uh, ok. Maybe I’ll just go over here and read The Hunger Games instead.” “No, no! You mustn’t! YOU MUSTN’T!” Damn you, Games Workshop, see what you’ve done!

Ahoy there, intriguing post. I’m not sure I agree that single-gender or single-sex races are inherently, not bad I suppose you’re arguing but not good either, in terms of fantasy. I do however agree that they’re usually put into practice in a really lazy way, particularly when it comes to Dwarfs.

On the miniatures front, check out Oathsworn Miniatures, they’re in the UK but they ship overseas and seem to be making a pretty good effort in terms of female Dwarfs, they currently have two armoured warrior types, a pair of rogues, a “not-Slayer”, a duelist, and a priestess. They’re presently fulfilling a second Kickstarter with more Dwarfs, but they’ll be a bit more “civilian” this time round since the models represent a clan of brewers. They look to be roughly on par with GW, 22mm tall and about halfway between the older style and the new plastics in terms of proportions.

On the Scibor Dwarfs, I own a few of the male ones and they’re actually about 25mm tall, so they’re a tad larger than GW, I think they just decided to follow human conventions on size and so sculpted the female Dwarfs a bit shorter than the male ones. Normally I’d find that a bit questionable, but the males are everything from fat to thin, muscular and not, slightly taller or shorter, so I don’t think it’s a case of “men = big and muscly, women = small and weak” thinking, so they may well add more female Dwarfs with different proportions as time goes on.

The original dwarves of myth were born of the earth and were male-ish but without actual specified gender. Tolkien wrote what he knew and had few females of any race, because he largely drew on his time in the army for inspiration. I suppose it is completely possible that the dwarven race of common fantasy trope has an intrinsic gender birth imbalance (rare among mammals but not unheard of in the animal kingdom). Perhaps in the fantasy trope the female dwarf births occur significantly less common than male and thus are encourage (if not forced) to stay home. No force necessary nor even a hugely patriarchal culture- just few enough females that there is a significantly fewer showing among ‘adventurers’ (already a small slice of an overall fantasy population) The ladies know they are valuable at home, and don’t _need_ to adventure or join the military.
I have GM’d a world with the reverse situation for my orc / ferengie analogs , 5% more females born and the high status females keeping harems of what ever males they can get to agree to join them. Made for some interesting role-play when they kept choosing to direct negotiations to the female characters (especially when they were interested in getting the male characters into their harem) Not too overt, but persistent and ongoing, it persuaded the party to waste time looking for other sources for what they needed.
It was even worse when another culture kept trying to flatter and treat the party’s pets and companion animals to improve their bargaining situation (ignoring the basic needs of the party for such things as water after traveling across a scorching desert for weeks). ;-)
Honestly though we just use Halfling and gnome female figures where necessary (though, those aren’t too common either).

Currently you have JavaScript disabled. In order to post comments, please make sure JavaScript and Cookies are enabled, and reload the page.Click here for instructions on how to enable JavaScript in your browser.